enforce justice and unity by “biting at the heels of the unjust.”98
Dan’s role as “Judge” has been misunderstood, forgotten or ignored. Samson, who was from the tribe of Dan, was the last judge in the Book of Judges, leading Israel for 20 years. After Delilah cut seven locks of his hair, the Philistines seized him, gauged out his eyes, and made him a mill slave. When they put Samson between the pillars of the temple he prayed to Yahweh for the strength to push apart the pillars and bring down the temple to smite his enemies. The rabbis tell us that Samson remained pure in judgement, but adopted the treacherous tactics of the serpent in order to “bite at the heels” of the Philistines.
This same dichotomy is embodied within the twin pole serpents of the Caduceus (Figures 14d & e). When viewed from a horizontal perspective, their embodiment of Fire and Water causes them to ascend like Fire, and descend like Water, along the polar axis. From an aerial perspective, however (Figures 14a,b & c), the serpent circles around in a spiral, giving the appearance of swallowing its tail. The Great Serpent constellation, Draco, is circumpolar, revolving in a great circle in the northern sky around the polar star (Figure 14b). Like Ouroboros within ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology, Draco appears to swallow its tail (Figures 14a & b). The ancient mathematics that describes this —the Navel of Order (Figure 25) — is a mathematical description of the sun’s path measured against the stars. The Caduceus, ascending and descending to and from God, is the go-between, or “messenger” between God and man, i.e., man’s soul.
There is a profound mathematics at the heart of all religion that is symbolized by the tightly coupled mythologies of the eagle and the serpent. Solving the mathematics of the “circle and the square within”99 reveals the great religious significance of the body’s purification, as symbolized by the serpent “swallowing its tail.” What each of these different myths share is a story of how a divine bird of prey somehow lifts the serpent, a symbol of libidinous energy and temptation, into the sky (the 12th constellation is effectively “swallowing up” the 13th constellation). Within this same purification tradition, on the Eve of the New Year, Jews would cast their sins onto a goat — a scapegoat — and then exile it from the town. Animal sacrifice (Hebrew: korban) was an important part of the purification rite. In the New Testament, the 12th disciple sacrificed Christ, the lamb of God, the 13th member of the group. Similarly, YHVH Himself slays “the Leviathan, the Elusive Serpent” in order to vanquish evil (Figure 14f).
Figure 14a & 14b - Draco: the Great Circumpolar Dragon
Figure 14c - Ouroboros in Egyptian Mythology
Figure 14d & e - The Caduceus as the Soul
Figure 14f - Gustave Dore’s Slaying of Leviathan
In that day Yahweh will punish, With His great, cruel, mighty sword Leviathan the Elusive Serpent — Leviathan the Twisting Serpent: He will slay the Dragon of the sea 100 ... And in that day, Yahweh will beat out the peoples like grain from the channel of the Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt; and you shall be picked up one by one, O children of Israel! And in that day, a great ram’s horn shall be sounded; and the strayed who are in the land of Assyria and the expelled who are in the land of Egypt shall come and worship Yahweh on the holy mount, in Jerusalem.101
The story of Yahweh and the Leviathan has a long history in Middle Eastern myth. In Egypt, the pharaohs would journey to the afterlife with Ra, the Sun god, on his nightly 12 hour journey through the rivers of the Underworld. Ra was protected by the storm god Set. Each night Set would slay the serpent of chaos, Apep, allowing the sun to rise each day, often bloodied from battle (Figure 14g). The annual “banishing of Apep,” an ancient rite of Egyptian priests, became the prototype for the actions of the Jewish High Priest of Israel on Yom Kippur. This ancient rite included an effigy of Apep built to contain all of the evil and darkness in Egypt. It would then be burned to protect the people for another year. The Egyptian Tuat derives from the Sumerian Apsû. It was both the waters that the boat of the Sun God Ra traversed during the night, and the place where mortal souls journeyed to after death.
The significance of “slaying the Great Serpent,” is symbolic of mastering the seminal waters that lead us toward sexual distraction and away from Enlightenment, thus the need for Abraham’s Covenant of Circumcision. In the Biblical version of this allegory, Yahweh metaphorically “slays” the evil serpent to save Israel (Figure 14f):
Figure 14g- Set slaying Apep the Evil Serpent in the Waters Below
The Bull of Heaven as Primordial Earth
Aurochs were very large bulls, now extinct, that were worshipped in Egypt and depicted in Paleolithic carvings and cave paintings discovered in Lascaux, France (Figures 15a & b) and Çatal Höyük (Figure 15c). Bulls and cows have been worshipped in India and the Middle East as a reflection of the constellation, Taurus, symbolizing Earth: The dense, opaque matter comprising the body contains the soul’s divine light, the way a bucket contains water. It is “Mother Earth” that protects and nurtures the spiritual foetus. The Bull of Heaven plows the furrows that hold divine seed, while the gentle, nurturing Sacred Cow of India (Figure 15d) was the matriarchal goddess, Hathor of Egypt. “Finding the great secret [of immortality] is to find the cows, or their milk [Soma].” The Aryans longed for cows, because their utters symbolically contained the elixir of immortality. Indra slew the dragon Vrtra, (lit: the blocker), a stone serpent slain by Indra to liberate the rivers, while Vrtra’s brother, Vala is a stone cave, similarly split by Indra to “liberate the cows.” Vrtra and Vala symbolized the dense physical matter of the body blocking the flow of Soma, the Divine Elixer.
Figure 15a - Egyptian Bull god Apis Figure 15b - Hall of Bulls Lascaux France (circa 30,000 BCE)
Figure 15c - Çatal Höyük (Circa 6500 BCE) Figure 15d - Sacred Hindu Bull
The Lion as Primordial Fire
Lions and Leopards could still be found in Egypt until the rain belt moved south (circa 3500 BCE). They were “conquerors of death,” and fierce protectors of royal tombs and thrones (Figures 16a & c). Just as a lion is “king of beasts,” Fire held authority over the other primordial elements. Within monotheism, Heaven and the Throne of Glory were fashioned from the primordial
